A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Tm Bioscience (Toronto), a commercial genetic testing provider, reported that it has entered into an agreement with a syndicate of underwriters led by Canaccord Capital and including Versant Partners and Westwind Partners under which the underwriters have agreed to buy 5.6 million common shares from the company on a “bought deal” basis at a price of $1.80 per common share, for aggregate gross proceeds of $10,080,000.

The underwriters also will have an option, exercisable for a period of 30 days following the closing date, to purchase up to an additional 840,000 common shares on thesame terms and conditions to cover over-allotments and for market stabilization purposes.

Closing of the offering is expected to be on or about Dec. 19.

“Net proceeds from the offering will be used for the advancement of Tm Bioscience’s pipeline of genetic tests and for general working capital,” said CFO Jim Pelot. “Tm continues to see significant growth in its existing core genetic testing market and recently announced a further expansion of its product portfolio with a comprehensive respiratory viral panel that includes testing for the avian flu.”

VirtualScopics (Rochester, New York) reported the final closing of a private placement in which the company raised aggregate gross proceeds of $7 million.

In the private placement, investors purchased shares of Series A convertible preferred stock, convertible into 2.8 million shares of the company’s common stock, and warrants to purchase an additional 1.4 million shares of the company’s common stock.

Following the closing of the private placement, Virtual-Scopics has 24,689,071 shares of common stock outstanding, which includes the shares of common stock underlying the Series A convertible preferred stock.

These funds will be used to grow sales and further VirtualScopics’ investment in research and development activities. Over the next 12 months, the company said it anticipates adding staff in Rochester to support expected growth.

VirtualScopics is a provider of advanced medical image analysis services. It has created a suite of image analysis tools used in detecting and analyzing specific structures in volumetric medical images, as well as characterizing minute changes in structures over time, providing vital information to support clinical trials and diagnostic applications.

In other financings news:

• Gene-IT (Worcester, Massachusetts), a provider of sequence search software for the life sciences, reported securing a $4.1 million Series A financing led by Cross Atlantic Partners and Milestone Venture Partners (both New York), with reinvestment by Societe Generale Asset Management Alternative Investments (Paris).

Gene-IT said it would use the funds to expand sales and marketing aimed at discovery scientists and attorneys in North American and European markets.

The company’s flagship product, GenomeQuest, is a web application that accepts text or sequence queries and renders results computed by a large-scale sequence comparison engine. The offering includes a service that continuously aggregates, indexes and updates sequence data from dozens of genomic data sources. The results are provided in a format designed to answer each user’s questions.

Gene-IT said that it will expand GenomeQuest next year to address emerging applications of sequence search in areas such as RNAi and diagnostics.

Gene-IT also has an office in Paris.

• Spectrum Laboratories (Rancho Dominguez, California) reported that it has filed a certificate of amendment to its certificate of incorporation with the Secretary of State of the state of Delaware to consummate a 1-for-25,000 reverse split of its common stock.

Holders of fractional interests after the reverse stock split will receive a payment of $2.56 per each pre-split share owned.

Spectrum makes disposable hollow-fiber modules used primarily for biological separations, molecular separations and the management of cell lines. These applications include separation and purification of pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, food, beverages and fluids for industry and research.